Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he just breaking up full paragraphs to write them as sentences in Twitter? Doesn't this categorically demonstrate exactly how useless and stupid twitter is? Because this story is interesting, and it's only interesting because Baum is flouting Twitter to write something normally?

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How about someone hook a script up to project Gutenberg and publish all the great works in the public domain 140 characters at a time.

Whoop-dee-doo! But who would want to read it that way?

If someone came up with a service that only allowed 20 characters per posting would Twittards see that as a six-fold improvement?

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But to be fair, he did catch some flack for romanticizing the dysfunctional qualities of the city in interviews selling his book. He sometimes sounds as if the locals are proud of their status as a place prone to criminal dysfunctions and corruption -- or that the locals take some kind of sick pride in Mayor RayNay behaving like a Third World corrupt municipal mayor doing tacky shit like taking family trips in exchange for shitty, useless CCTV service.

It would be one thing if Baum actually lived inside the bowl, but he doesn't. He was ultimately somebody who touched down there to sell a book. (Albeit he stayed longer than the average "touch down" journalist, like Rick Bragg.)

In all fairness not everyone in the bowl liked Braum as an outsider (doesn't he live in Colorado?) talking dewy eyed about the city's problems being part of its draw. If it were so lovely, he now has the funds to buy himself an antebellum home in the Garden District and the alarm system, too!

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